


as steel unbending

by tielan



Series: sharp Evening stars and bright Morning flame [9]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Parent Nick Fury, Sedoretu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-25 20:19:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17128082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: When they swore their oaths, they didn’t know they wouldn’t make it. Who ever does?





	as steel unbending

Nick had a _sedoretu_ once, long ago.

Nothing formal, nothing official.

He met Josh at high school, the white boy who looked at him and saw a person instead of a negro, with a laugh like lightning and a fist like a brick when someone took Nick in despite. Maisie was the girl in the next street with the voice to rival Aretha, and a roving eye bold enough to look him over like she was deciding whether Nick would do for her or not. And Helen was the lady of the quartet – a mind to out-think them all and a sense of mischief trapped in a life of sweet tea and torte cakes, confined to pearls and lace like her mother and aunt before her.

They were young and wild and free. They knew what they were, what they could be.

When they swore their oaths, they didn’t know they wouldn’t make it.

Who ever does?

–

Nick makes a point of peering beyond her the first time he sees her after Trauma Zentrum – not as though she’s not there, but to suggest he’s surprised there aren’t more people following her around.

“No entourage?”

Maria doesn’t pretend to misunderstand him. “They’re busy.”

Her clipped tone lets him know that he’s not entirely forgiven. Which is fine. She’s not entirely forgiven either. Of all the people she could marry, all the men in the world, she had to marry _them_?

“I’m surprised Rogers lets you out of his sight.”

“It turns out Barnes is a restraining influence.” She stares him down. “You know, Nat said you’d be like this.”

Natasha knows him too well. Not that Maria doesn’t, but she still hopes for better from him. Maybe that’s why he finds it easier to deal with Maria than Natasha; the weight of one’s children’s expectations is both goad and curb.

He wants to ask how the four of them get along, or don’t; how she and Natasha restrain the mile-wide overprotective streaks in their husbands, how they live in and out of each others’ pockets...

He wants to ask if she’s happy with her choices.

But that’s not how they do things.

\--

They don’t meet often, even if their contacts are at least every week. Emails, texts, even social media, all are useful for transferring coded information, keeping track of where the other one is, conveying in broad generalities what’s happening to each other.

Every now and then, though, they need to update face to face.

Nick pauses as he closes the safehouse door behind him. There’s the scent of a man’s aftershave in the air, just a hint, and although he’s pretty sure he knows who it is, his fingers briefly tighten around his weapon.

“You’re late.” Maria emerges from the laundry, the washing machine grumbling behind her. Even spies need clean clothes from time to time.

“Is it Rogers or Barnes?” He lifts his voice and indicates the corridor leading down to the bedrooms.

Rogers emerges after a moment, his hair long and leonine – and damp, his t-shirt still clinging to his body. “Nick.”

“Rogers.”

“We were in Indonesia when your call came through.” Maria speaks as if two of the three key men in her life aren’t eyeballing each other with a wariness that belies the years they spent working together. “Sudhono says it’s been quiet, except for a sudden medical stir of interest around a Surabayan herb that the locals use as a painkiller. Apparently it deadens pain receptors sufficiently that the brain doesn’t shut down during a conscious biomodification process.”

“A conscious biomodification process such as a super-soldier serum being administered?” Nick doesn’t look away from Rogers.

“Apparently,” Maria repeats. She pauses, looks from one man to the other, and says simply, “Steve.”

He takes a moment to respond. But when he looks to her, he smiles. “I’ll get the coffee.”

“Thank y—”

Nick figures the kiss Rogers plants on Maria as he passes is a reminder that the conflict between them for Maria’s attention and loyalties has a dimension beyond rank now. As though it ever didn’t.

It might rankle more if Maria didn’t break the kiss, frowning.

“What was that for?”

Rogers just smirks and nips her mouth again with a tenderness that makes Nick feel like a voyeur. “Because.” But he goes to the kitchen, and Maria moves to the lounge, her earlobes bright pink, even as she briskly updates Nick on the details of their contacts in the area.

Nick doesn’t comment on her blush. He doesn’t stare when Rogers comes back in with coffee and wraps her hand around the mug to make sure she’s got a hold of it before letting go. He doesn’t twitch an eyelid when Rogers sits down beside Maria, settling himself so they’re just touching. He doesn’t frown at the hand that Rogers rests possessively on her back for the duration of the conversation, or at the way Maria consults with Rogers about little details that she would usually just assume herself.

He _does_ take a smug pleasure at the flicker of a frown that crosses the other man’s face when Nick asks for a favour and she agrees without either hesitating or looking at Rogers.

It’s not a competition. Nick knows perfectly well that if he makes Maria choose, he’ll lose her.

Doesn’t mean he can’t be pleased that she still heeds him.

The ache in his chest is probably remnant of the bullets Barnes put in him. Probably.

–

Speaking of Barnes, Nick never figured their paths would cross again.

Coming upon him in Wakanda is a surprise. The last he heard, Barnes was with Rogers in South America.

“You’ve met before?” Princess Shuri is all wide-eyed surprise that doesn’t fool Nick for an instant. The Wakandans aren’t stupid, and there isn’t a one of them hasn’t done their background check on anyone who’s allowed within their borders.

Hell, given the Wakandan national psyche – not to mention their globe-spanning spy network, Nick wouldn’t be surprised if they could report on what he had for dinner last night in Amsterdam.

Meanwhile, Barnes looks like he wants to take cover, but his shoulders are square as he looks Nick in the eye. “Director Fury.”

“Didn’t figure to see you here.”

“T’Challa was kind enough to offer me sanctuary.”

“After you stole Maria out from under his nose? I’ll say.” No point in soft-shoeing it. And Nick is curious as to how Barnes will react. 

Barnes’s smile is quiet and thin. “She stole herself. As you well know.”

Nick isn’t entirely convinced, but he puts on a show for the Princess, who’s cannier than she looks, and less pre-occupied with her technology than she makes out. But he keeps his eyes open, and if he’s hyperconscious of Barnes’ position relative to him at all times that they’re in the same space, it’s absolutely not because the man once tried to kill him while brainwashed.

The older advisors find his wariness amusing, although not for the reasons he gives.

“You see him with a father’s eye,” says N’Tonbu of the River Tribe when Fury protests, “not with the eye of a commander.”

–

His kids don’t always call. Sometimes they just drop in uninvited.

“Maria said you’d be here.”

Which means Maria gave her the codes to disable the safehouse security, too. Nick accepts that he’s been outmaneuvred by the two of them, and just looks over the market vegetables Nat is pulling out of the bags she hauled into the apartment.

“Soup?”

“Pozole,” she says, as though finding the ingredients for a Mexican dish isn’t close to impossible in Vietnam.

Nick wants to demand answers – what is she doing, what was she thinking, why _them_? How long did she know about Barnes, and what made her think that painting a target on her back with both Rogers and Barnes was a good idea?

She wouldn’t tell him if he asked. That’s _personal_. And they don’t do personal. 

And if they did...well, Nick wouldn’t know what to think anyway.

If Maria’s the one who stayed close to home, Natasha’s the wild child who survived being an assassin, an agent, and an Avenger and still came out on top. And sure, Director Nick Fury has always known the unwisdom of getting personal with his agents, but Natasha got past him and he let her.

Now she’s moving around the kitchen, preparing him a meal like a dutiful daughter. And he’s not going to ask how she knows the things that he’s missed from back home – again, because he doesn’t actually want to know the answers.

Yeah, he’s getting old and maudlin. So shoot him. Or don’t.

So Nick sits down on the chair and just asks, “Do I want to know where you’ve been?”

“Roaming the earth like Satan.” Natasha looks up and the faint smile on her lips transforms the cool serenity of her expression to a sudden, fond warmth. “It’s good to see you, Nick.”

It’s good to see her, too. But Nick has never gone with such useless pleasantries before and he’s too old to start now.

She doesn’t mention Rogers or Barnes, and he doesn’t ask.

Instead, he sits back and lets her prepare him a meal, an old man accepting his daughter’s due.

–

Nick had a _sedoretu_ once.

Prejudice, war, and death destroyed them, long before Nick started to work for what would later be S.H.I.E.L.D.

Sometimes, when he looks at what he’s done, Nick wonders if he’d have been all he was if Helen hadn’t folded in the face of her family’s bigotry, if Josh hadn’t gone to Vietnam, if Maisie hadn’t died in childbirth.

Maria and Natasha won’t have to face that. By the time they stepped into their moiety marriages, they were fully formed, full-grown women with wills and wisdoms of their own. They’re the closest thing to daughters Nick will ever have, but they’re able, terrifying women, too. And the men they’ve chosen for themselves know who they are, what they’re capable of, how far they can go, and where not to tread.

They’re strong and careful and focused and committed.

Will they make it to the end?

No-one ever knows.

But Nick figures their odds are good.

**Author's Note:**

> I said that Nick had his 5 cents to put in. Since Peggy started all this off, I feel it's right that Nick gets to finish it.


End file.
